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Here’s a quick life hack (I have a very loose grasp on the definition of “life hack”):

Consider giving your roommate or a family member an approved photo of yourself in case of your unfortunate disappearance at the hands of, no doubt, some male deviant. If your emergency contact doesn’t have a photo they can quickly hand over to the press or to the screen printer, then your “Find Samantha” t-shirts will end up with some random Huey, Duey, and Luey kissy-faced picture that was pulled from your personal Instagram account.

Like what if some journalist published this on LAist.com?

Me as Hipster Ariel on Halloween taking a selfie in a bathroom mirror is not exactly the kind narrative I’d like to have portrayed to the world.

Now this picture:

Aren’t I sweet? I’m wearing matching jammies with a mom who loves me very much! Don’t you want to find me??? My hair is freshly dyed, my face is looking vuuury thin, this is this is the sort of picture you want to use!

Listen, if you’re fighting for your life in the trunk of an old Honda Civic,wouldn’t you at least like the peace of mind that you have full creative control over your disappearance?

My most controversial blog post to date, The More You Know: Men in Sweatpants, is still garnering negative attention from humorless men across the internet over 2 years since its initial posting. (Disclaimer: if you do check out that post, please don’t judge me for the writing or subject matter. It was two years ago!)

I somehow missed this gem that was gifted me last month: Sorry, Jaks. You’ve underestimated me. Leaving a snippy comment on here is the equivalent of Ms. Banks slipping some Tyra Mail under my door, so thank yewwww.

Meanwhile, I’m probably helping countless young men out there, guiding them through the trials and tribulation of adolescence. This is what I found on my Site Statistic page today:

If I can touch the life of even one lost and confused boy out there…….. well, then I probably don’t have to be a Big Brothers/Big Sisters volunteer which I’ve considered doing countless times.

Back in college, I used to emcee at a karaoke bar. Though I only worked there for a month, I experienced more in that month than most 20 year-old’s should experience in like, two months. During that time, I picked up some lessons along the way, including:

1. If at your job, the new, older security guard who looks like Channing Tatum asks you out upon meeting you, it really is too good to be true. It’s possible that he might smile and you’ll realize he has a missing tooth or maybe he’ll end up getting fired on his first day for calling your manager a bitch. Or both! Yes, surely both.

2. Just because one of your managers has a newborn and says he’s sickened by the men who harass you while you’re trying to work, doesn’t mean he won’t tell you that he thinks he never should have gotten married, and you’re the only one he’s told, and you’re so mature, and do you want to get a drink after work?

And lastly,

3. Everyone sings the same handful of songs.

So, using all of my professional expertise, here are the 10 Karaoke Songs Everyone Sings and What They Say About You:

Shoop by Salt-N-Peppa or Man, I Feel Like a Woman by Shania Twain:

You have a delightful sense of humor and are something of a feminist, interested in uniting the women of the bar, if only for 3 minutes. While we all drunkenly shout through the chorus as one, we are singing for our oppressed sisters around the world who do not have the freedom to hold a GirlZ Night for themselves.

All These Things That I’ve Done by The Killers: You’re a boy in your mid-twenties who has been forced to go to karaoke night for your girlfriend’s best friend’s birthday party. I will hand it to you though, everyone gets hyped for the “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” part.

Fool in the Rain by Led Zeppelin: You’re a man in your mid-forties who has been forced to go to karaoke night for your wife’s best friend’s birthday party. It’s a night out of the suburbs where every wife gets a Moscato and every husband gets a Jack and Coke!

I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston: You have no self-awareness.

Take Me or Leave Me from “RENT”:

You are a former or current musical theatre kid who will go up and sing no less than 3 times in one night, use all the vibrato you can muster, and then sit in a booth in the back while you complain about how sad it is that any person singing who isn’t you thinks they’re doing really well.

Don’t Stop Believing by Journey or Santeria by Sublime: You have no creativity or imagination.

American Pie by Don McLean or Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin:

You have narcissistic personality disorder and have no regard for other people’s feelings or happiness. I always had the courage to save a room from a 10 minute Led Zeppelin hostage situation and pull the plug on the mic after a verse and a chorus, but not every karaoke emcee is as protective over their audience.

So, based on your favorite karaoke song, what kind of person are you? Honestly, I don’t care as long as you don’t sing Hallelujah.

Yesterday, one of my blog posts, Am I an Adult?was featured on WordPress.com’s “Freshly Pressed” page. Since it has brought me a bunch of new followers over night, I thought I should reintroduce myself. I know you could just scroll back and read some old posts, but I never give up an opportunity to coerce strangers into following me on Twitter.

So me. Here are the most important bullet points to get you up to speed:

I moved to LA from New Hampshire about 9 months ago to become a comedic actress/writer.

If I wasn’t a comedian I’d be a Special Victims Unit criminal psychologist, B.D. Wong-style.

My 3 favorite things are Connie Britton, inter species friendships, and that thing on TV shows where wayward children call their foster parents “Mom” and “Dad” for the first time.

If you think Amanda Knox did it then you can let yourself out.

Related: “Foxy Knoxy’s The Mandy Project” is the most clever thing I’ve ever come up with.

Like this:

Like I said in yesterday’s post, I turned 25 this month, and it’s strange because I still feel like I’m in high school. It’s not like I’m clinging to youth or anything, in fact, I’m excited to turn 30 in the near future. I’ve found that every six months or so I become a little less of an asshole, so I’m hoping by 30 I’ll be a real hip woman in charge of her own destiny, getting her clothes tailored, not eating as much processed foods, the whole thing.

But for now, I can’t tell- am I an adult? Let’s look at the evidence:

ADULT: I have aged out of eligibility to be on The Real World because apparently 25 is too old to catch syphilis in a hot tub while you experiment with your sexuality. What if I’m a late bloomer, huh, MTV?

NON-ADULT: Still too young to be a Real Housewife. Not a girl, not yet a woman.

ADULT: I pay rent with my own money for a townhouse with a garbage disposal, yes, garbage disposal.

NON-ADULT: I recently cashed in an animal crackers jug full of change at a Coin Star so I would have drinking money.

ADULT: I told a co-worker how old I turned on my birthday and he said, “25! You can get married now!” Isn’t that wild? I mean, at this point, if I had a kid in a high school bathroom stall no one would give me a reality show. They might call DCF because what am I doing having a baby in a high school bathroom stall? but 25 is a completely appropriate age to get married and have a child. In the Mid-West.

NON-ADULT: No matter how old I am when I have kids, always exclaiming “this is children raising children!” is a very charming thing I plan to do.

ADULT: Another thing about kids- I’m at least mature enough to know at what time a toddler should be in bed and not at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival among half a million people. That would be all of the times. When I went this year it was after 11pm and I was very surprised at the toddler to screaming drunk people ratio.

NON-ADULT: At 8pm on a Sunday I locked my keys in my car and waited until 1am to ask AAA to get them because I was late for karaoke. Somebody, quick! Give me a baby to raise! I might accidentally lock them in the back seat, but I promise I’ll fish them out after last call!

ADULT: I got my oil changed all by myself this week!

NON-ADULT: I didn’t get my oil changed all by myself until I was 25 year old.

Welp, I am no closer to an answer, but at least I have enough self awareness to limit the amount of times I say the phrase “quarter-life crisis.” That counts for something, right?

If you have a middle aged dad who owns a car with a functioning radio, you probably know I’m quoting a Pink Floyd song. If not, I’m sorry, you probably had a difficult childhood and/or very quiet road trips.

Anyway, I’m baaaack.

I know I said I was just going out for cigarettes and I’d be home in time for dinner, but now here we are two months later and I’m just trying to walk back into your life like nothing happened. (At least I’m home in time for A dinner)?

I’ll be honest with you. I thought about leaving this blog in my dust and taking up with a podcast, but as my father always told me and his father told him, “you make your bed, you sleep in it.” And hey, maybe I can make this an open relationship and do both? This is 2013, after all.

I was debating whether or not to start back up with the blog when a reader (not my mother. Trust me, she has a direct line to nag me about posting new stuff) sent me an e-mail saying he and his friend missed my blog. Listen, I’m not going to copy and paste his email because that’s no better than when people retweet compliments, but I will say he was throwing around words like “insightful” and “hilarious” (full disclosure, he actually said “humorous” but as a comedy writer, I had to “punch it up” for him as we say in the industry).

I just took a break from blogging because I didn’t feel like I had anything to say, so I went out there and LIVED so I would have something to write about. (Oh, reminds me, do any aspiring Youtube stars want to take this idea: a Bonnie Raitt parody song called “Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Blog About”? Please. Run with it).

So, here’s what’s been happening with me since we last spoke two months ago:

I’ve started using words like “the industry” and “the biz”. I also have “projects in the pipeline” and I’m punching it up and also loglines and back end residuals and I’m just like, selling it in the room, ya know? I also work at the front desk of a life insurance firm in Beverly Hills and I’m happy to pay $2 for a thimble of wheat grass juice… So I guess I’ve just been busy making Los Angeleez my home.

I started doing Crossfit.

I quit Crossfit

I gained 5 pounds

I’m back at Crossfit!

Breaking Bad finale

Coven premiere

I’m in the throes of a very serious Stevie Nicks phase (see above).

+ Turned 25

– Began my 25th year by losing a booty shaking contest to a 17 year-old whilst in the presence of drag queens.

There it is! 2 months chock-full of life experience and writing material. I’m ready to get back to blogging regularly! (Until I get bored again or don’t become internet famous, which ever affects me more first).

Like this:

Hi there. How’s your week going so far? Do you like to laugh? Sure you do. That’s why you’re here reading my blog. Did that sound conceited? I didn’t mean it to be. Let’s start over. If you like to laugh, I have a real treat for you: something to make you laugh!

You Should Be Famous is a video created by Jet Eveleth, a teacher I had when I spent a semester my senior year of college at Second City in Chicago. Jet’s like an Improv Pixie Dream Girl, and in this she plays 3 different characters auditioning for an America’s Got Talent-type reality show. It’s very Summer Heights High-ish. So watch the 17 minute teaser and then donate to her indiegogo thing so she can make it into a feature length movie. At what point in this post did I decide to make this the laziest, worst piece of writing I have ever created? First syllable? Byyyye.

Due to both an array of childhood traumas involving races and the imminent threat of blisters, I have never been a runner. I’ve generally kept my cardio to Stairclimbers, but now that I pay my own rent, I don’t have access to them since gym memberships have become a middle class luxury of the past (am I living below the poverty line? I haven’t been able to afford a haircut since May, so yes?). Now I have no choice but to become a runner, and after taking a few spins around the neighborhood, I’ve realized there’s a lot I have to overcome before I make my athletic transformation.

First, I have to get over my fear of being kidnapped. I would say some of my top three fears right now are:

Accidently “liking” an Instagram photo of someone I’m not following.

Getting acid thrown in my face by a jilted ex-boyfriend (I realize how irrational this fear is. I don’t have an ex that cared so much about our break up that they would be compelled to disfigure me so if they couldn’t love me, no one else would. One day, maybe).

Getting kidnapped while on a run.

I’m the perfect candidate! A slow moving target distracted by headphones, plus I fit very comfortably in the trunk of any compact vehicle. This is Los Angeles. There are so many people driving around my neighborhood presumably looking for a little red head to do weird things to. Though, when I lived in New Hampshire I was equally afraid of getting kidnapped during a run because there were so few people driving around. (Just so you know, this all stems from my mother telling me probably fake stories of women she “knew” who were kidnapped while in the process of getting the mail).

Besides having to run to the other side of the street everytime I see that I’m about to pass a large, unmarked van, I also have to worry about what I do with my stuff. I’m not about to buy one of those armbands to put my iPhone in for a hobby I will probably quit within the month. So I’m left holding my iPhone like an idiot . And what about water? I can’t have both my hands full, obviously, so I just go waterless for a half hour? This is insane.

There’s also no incentive to keep running when I get a side cramp. At least on a treadmill you have to keep up or risk being thrown off. With running on the street, I can just tell my legs “NOPE!” and then they walk me back and we eat a burrito bowl.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll keep it up. I ran three times about two and half weeks ago and I feel like I probably look really hot now.

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That goop article you’ve been slaving over can wait until Monday, so put down your hemp seed detox smoothie and pick up a cold glass of Sauv Blah because it’s the weekend, Gwyneth!
I’m excited, too!

BTW Gwyney, you fill out a snake skin bikini like a dream.

I’m working today, but I started my weekend festivities yesterday at a party celebrating the opening of a Warby Parker store in The Standard Hotel in West Hollywood. Was it worth staying out so late when I had to wake up so early for work the next day? Well, I got a free canvas tote bag containing a one-size-fits-not-me pair of slippers, so you be the judge (and duh. Of course it was worth it because all women inexplicably love free tote bags that we pack our lunch in once and then never use again).

Plus Mischa Barton was there. It was coolish to have Mischa Barton at that party, but maybe not cool to be Mischa Barton at that party. Like I said, free tote bag, but basically the event was just a bunch of hipsters in affordable glasses and skinny ties standing next to a pool. And wasn’t it just The OC’s 10 year anniversary? Surely there’s some Buzzfeed article about it floating around that might give her popularity a little resurgance granting her access to cooler parties. Or maybe she could just stay home. I’m not a fan of hers or anything so I don’t know her substance abuse history like I do Lindsay Lohan’s or Laurie Forman’s from That 70’s Show (RIP), but she definitely feels like someone who shouldn’t be drinking. Regardless, being in her presence is just cool enough to my hipper East Coast relatives that when they point out that I could be a secretary in New Hampshire too, I can counter with the lie that I live a fabulous LA lifestyle.

Plus, I can’t be a secretary in glamourousBeverly Hills in New Hampshire, can I? Uh-no.